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detroit-grand-prix · 1 year ago

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thistle and weeds - susie wolff x oc

iii. your strife strikes at you in your sleep

Summary: Maree's solution to her current dilemma isn't practical or wise, and she can't get away with it forever, but it's all she's got until it comes to a head during the Barcelona F1 academy round.

Tags/warnings: almost one-night stands, alcohol use

Author’s note: This one didn't come quite as easily to me as chapters 1 and 2 did, but, it is a bit longer and more in-depth as a consolation! I felt like I could have maybe limited most of this to a summary, but I didn't really want to cut Maree's character development off at the knees like that, so the bulk of this chapter is strictly about Maree. I hope you like it anyway!

By the time the Barcelona round arrived in mid-May, Susie was a regular feature in Maree’s dreams, and Maree had decided that the only way to deal with it was to start avoiding talking to Susie as much as possible.

Out of sight, out of mind, Maree thought. It was a reasonable line of logic, but she hadn’t expected the act of avoiding Susie to cause Maree to think about her even more than she did before.

Getting through the Valencia race weekend without running into Susie was easy enough, as Susie wasn’t there. She had traveled to Miami, in the United States, for the Miami Grand Prix weekend. She was slated to speak at an F1-sponsored business summit where she would be announcing the partnership of F1 Academy and Hello Sunshine, and the media production company that Reese Witherspoon had founded. Maree was proud of the fact that she had a significant hand in facilitating the deal, and that they would be making a docuseries about the first F1 Academy season to capitalize on some of the “Drive to Survive” buzz.

Even aside from missing the Valencia round, Susie had a fairly demanding travel schedule and didn’t work out of the London office much of the time. She worked mostly from her home in Monaco, or on the road when she went to F1 races with Toto, but she was in regular contact with Maree via email and WhatsApp, but their conversations had started becoming more social, sometimes about things that weren’t strictly related to F1 Academy business.

For instance, while she was in Miami, Susie sent Maree a picture of the view of the beach from the balcony of her and Toto’s room at the Four Seasons, right on the Gulf of Mexico. She also sent a picture she’d taken of herself standing on the balcony of her suite, showing off the blue-and-white striped button down she was wearing. Maree limited her response to something about how the weather looked lovely. The pictures she’d sent Maree were very different from the photos she’d posted on Instagram, one of which was a photo of herself reflected in the glass sliding door of her suite. Maree did her best to keep her responses to Susie’s more social messages simple, and did her best to avoid scrolling back through their WhatsApp chat to look at the pictures Susie sent her pictures too much in hopes of not focusing on the details, like the way the Miami sunlight made her hair look like actual spun gold, or the way the sea breeze was gently ruffling it, or the way that she could see the skin just above Susie’s bra line because she’d left the topmost buttons of her shirt undone. She definitely tried to avoid imagining herself walking hand-in-hand with Susie down the long stretch of beach, enjoying the glow of the sunset and the roar of the tides as they kissed.

On the days that Susie was in the office, Maree hunkered down behind the locked door of her own office. She declined Susie’s usual lunch invitations, preferring to say that she already had lunch plans or that she had to run an errand. She spoke to Susie in meetings, but dashed back into her office as soon as they ended. She tried to artificially block off her schedule with check-ins with various colleagues, but the plan fell apart when her colleagues reasonably never had any updates for her.

By the time the Barcelona round started, Maree hardly had the nerve to even look Susie directly in the eye any more, and had resorted to very ungracefully turning around and walking the other way whenever she saw her approaching, loudly announcing that there was something she’d forgotten about in the other direction. She resolutely tried to ignore the confusion writ plainly on Susie’s face and tried to tell herself that there wasn’t also a touch of sadness or confusion with it, too.

The hammer came down on Saturday, just after the medal ceremony for the third and final round. Susie was taking photos with the girls that had made the weekend’s final podium. Maree was on her way back to the pit lane, chatting with one of the engineers for PREMA racing, Camilla, who had come to watch her driver, Marta García accept her third place trophy, when she heard someone call her name from behind her.

She turned around to see Delphine half-jogging toward her from the direction of the podium.

“Susie was looking for you earlier,” Delphine said as she caught up. “I don’t know if you talked to her already, but she just said she wanted to check in on a few things before she left.”

Maree swallowed against the lump that formed in her throat. She supposed she couldn’t reasonably evade her boss forever, but she was hoping in vain that she could make it a bit longer.

“Oh, thanks!” Maree said, trying to feign gratitude at the heads-up. “I’ll wait until she’s done.” She nodded a farewell to Camilla and walked back in the direction of the podium, trying to ignore the sudden onset of the desire to vomit.

Susie caught Maree’s eye as she finished up taking photos with the drivers and moved to descend the stairs.

“Hey,” Susie said. She didn’t sound upset, or like she was about to reprimand Maree for her absenteeism during the weekend.

“Delphine said you were looking for me?” Maree asked, trying to keep her voice from cracking.

“Oh, yes. I’ll be in the office on Tuesday, I was just hoping you and I could check in. You’ve been a difficult woman to keep track of lately,” Susie said, giving Maree a pat on the shoulder. She leaned in a bit closer, and Maree swore she could feel the air around her getting thinner. “I just wanted to make sure everything is okay. Let’s say right at nine. If you have any other meetings scheduled then, go ahead and move them.”

Her voice was as kind and even as ever, but Maree could read very clearly what Susie was telling her between the lines, or at least what she was imagining. “Something is going on with you, and I want to know why you’ve been ignoring me. You’re going to tell me why.”

It was a miserable weekend, and Maree spent all of it, including her flight from Barcelona to London, ruminating on what she would say, and for the first time, why she was having these dreams in the first place.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t had professional relationships with other women previously, but Susie was different. Maree had noticed that gravitational pull she had with the people around her, sure, but there was something else.

Somewhere in the air over France, she allowed herself to finally admit it: more than likely, she really was gay.

Maree had long wrestled with her sexuality. Even in secondary school, actually, she suspected that something was different. While most girls her age had boyfriends, she had no interest in dating at all. The first time she did kiss a boy, one of her classmates named Greg that she convinced herself she fancied, felt like she was a toddler at a Christmas party being forced to give an elderly relative a kiss against her will - more like something to be endured than something enjoyable.

Rowan threw a wrench in the works, giving her the thrill of an honest-to-god crush on a man for the first time, making her throw every conclusion she’d come to about herself in doubt. She even experienced the sort of intense, white-hot jealousy that they write pop songs about when Rowan briefly had a fling with another girl at the end of their first year at King’s, but it ended quickly.

After he and the other girl called things off, Rowan came to visit her in Glasgow at a summer music course for children where she was working as a trumpet lesson tutor. She remembered the thrill of sneaking him into her room in the dorm, and the way she felt when he kissed her goodbye in the car park before he left to head back to London, like she was finally experiencing what she had been missing all along.

Eventually, though, the shine wore off for Maree. Their relationship was completely devoid of any intimacy at all by the end of their marriage, and any physical contact with Rowan gave her that feeling once again of being a toddler receiving unwanted affection from a relative. She braced herself any time they kissed, and couldn’t help but notice how unpleasant it was, like the romantic equivalent of a limp handshake. Maree found herself being jealous of her lesbian friends, wondering what it would be like to date women. She was thrilled when one of her closest friends from uni, who had been out as long as Maree had known her, started dating the woman she would eventually marry, but felt a pang of jealousy when she saw how effortless their affection with one another was. She wanted that for herself, and had trouble picturing a man - Rowan or not - treating her with such tenderness.

There were other little moments in Maree’s life that made more sense in this new framing, like the time a woman with a stocky build and a boyish haircut from Maree’s Greek Literature class, sat down with her at the dining hall in Bush House, eager to discuss “the literary history of our people” after they’d listened to their professor’s lecture about Sappho.

“Our people?” Maree asked, confused. She wasn’t English, the other woman wasn’t Scottish, and she wasn’t sure what the poetry of Sappho had to do with the history of the British Isles as a whole.

“You know, lesbians. You’re lesbian, right?”

Maree remembered panicking and denying it without a second thought, and she didn’t remember ever talking to that woman again.

The other moment that bore reconsideration came just before her and Rowan decided to go forward with the legal separation. They had a lot of serious discussions about their relationship in the months leading up to it, but a particular question Rowan asked stuck in Maree’s mind.

“If we had never gotten together and you were single right now, would you ever start a relationship with someone that, well, looks like me?”

Maree assured him that yes, she still found him attractive, as she still had a vested interest in avoiding divorce at the time, that interest being that the prospect of having to up-end her life was terrifying. As she reflected on it two years post-divorce, she knew she would have answered differently.

As Maree got ready for bed on Monday night, hours away from her meeting with Susie, she comforted herself with the thought that her dreams were just years of denial boiling off under all of the pressure. It was just chickens coming home to roost.

She felt eerily calm the next morning as she walked into Susie’s office and shut the door behind her. It had helped that she couldn’t remember what she dreamed about the night before, but she was nervous as she sat down and saw the expression on Susie’s face. She looked rather cross as Maree sat down in the chair in front of her desk.

“I just wanted to chat about something.” Susie said, folding her hands together on the surface of her desk. She was looking directly into Maree’s eyes, which Maree found a bit unnerving. “We have an issue that we need to discuss if we’re going to continue to work together successfully. I am trying not to assume negative intent here, but you are giving me the impression that you no longer wish to work on this team, and I was just trying to get some insight on what I can do to improve the situation.”

Maree blanched. “N-no, that’s not it at all. You’re a great boss, and I love working on this project with you.” She felt the serenity she felt when she sat down dissipating, leaving anxiety in its place.

“Okay. I’m glad to hear that, but I’m just… confused. I thought you and I were getting on quite well together. As I said, I’m not one to assume the worst, but it seems like you’re going out of your way to avoid me.”

“It’s not that, I -”

“Did I say or do something to upset you?” Susie went on, an edge in her voice that made Maree feel like she was being scolded. “If it’s something you’re more comfortable discussing with HR, feel free to do so, but I’d hate to think that I’ve done something to make you upset.”

The worry and guilt on Susie’s face twisted something in the pit of Maree’s stomach.

“No, it’s nothing you’ve done, I just -”

Maree paused in thought. She obviously couldn’t tell Susie the truth. She couldn’t tell her boss that she had inspired Maree to spiral into a crisis of questioning a large segment of her sense of self. She couldn’t tell her boss - her married, heterosexual boss - that she was the opposite in the romantic movies that Maree’s mind was forcing her to watch every time she went to sleep, and that those movies definitely could not be played on television until after 10pm. There was no way. She would sooner go lay down in traffic.

Still, Maree couldn’t say that everything was fine when Susie obviously had noticed that things were very much not.

She could lie, but what would she even say? As she thought about it, her mind flashed to something she’d read in a spy novel she liked, where the main character was reflecting on his past and how he had used parts of it to construct a convincing cover identity. Half-truths make the best lies.

“It’s not you, I promise. It’s something I’ve been trying to deal with outside of work. I’m just going through something sort of…” Maree sat back in her chair and shifted uncomfortably. Now, it felt like she was talking to her therapist.

“You know how people go through midlife crises?”

Susie nodded, and Maree continued.

“It’s something like that. It’s something that’s been on my mind a lot, and I’m sorry if it’s made me seem distant or distracted. I guess I hadn’t realized that it was having a noticeable effect on my work. I’m sorry about that.”

Susie’s expression turned from curious to sympathetic.

“Oh, it’s no trouble. I was just a bit concerned. You’ve been doing a fine job still. It’s just that our team is so small it’s easy to tell if something is amiss with someone. You certainly don’t have to get into the details of it if you don’t want to. If you do, I’m happy to listen, and do anything I can to help, but you certainly don’t have to. Whatever you tell me is in complete confidence, of course.”

“I -” Maree stuttered, biting her lip for a moment. She certainly wouldn’t have ever talked to any of her bosses in the Premier League about this, or even James, her last boss, as kind as he was. But, she felt like she could trust Susie with this. She couldn’t not tell her at this point; the look of pure earnestness and care that she was giving Maree from across the expanse of her desk almost unlocked a desire to tell her almost anything. Giving up a half-truth was her only defense against telling Susie the whole truth.

She was at the edge of a precipice, like she was staring down a cliff into the roil of the ocean against the rocks.

“Fuck it.” Maree thought. “Maybe I’ll feel better if I say something out loud.”

“This is going to sound immature, like the sort of thing most people have figured out by the time they leave university at the latest, but I never thought about it until after the divorce.”

Maree took a deep breath.

“I guess it started when I got divorced, but I’ve been questioning a lot of things about myself lately, including my sexuality, and I… I think I’m a lesbian.”

Maree watched as Susie raised her eyebrows momentarily, and dread curled around her heart. For a moment, she thought she had misjudged both the situation and Susie’s character horribly, until Susie’s expression softened again nearly immediately, and she gave Maree a gentle smile. Maree couldn’t help but notice the way Susie’s entire posture seemed to relax, as she crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in her chair a bit.

“Well, that is a rather significant development,” she said. “I can see why you’ve been stressed out. I, erm, have known people, you know, friends of mine, that have gone through that process. I know it’s hard, especially because they’ve talked about not knowing who will be supportive and who won’t be. But, I will say that I will be here for you if you ever need to discuss anything. And, of course, it won’t leave this room until you want it to.”

Maree felt her entire body relax like every muscle was being tensed and that she let go of a breath that she wasn’t even aware that she was holding.

“I… appreciate that, thank you,” Maree murmured. She took a moment to glance around. This was the first time Maree had been in Susie’s office since it had been redecorated and set up as her permanent workspace. The entire space, including the furniture, was very minimalist.. She had the room done mostly in shades of cream, but had a few carefully selected objets d’art in a matching teal blue that reminded Maree of the shopping bags from Fortnum and Mason, an incredibly upscale department store in London. She and her flatmate from university once put on their nicest dresses to go to the tea salon for high tea, just for a laugh, but Maree secretly had a wonderful time, and didn’t really want the day to end. Maree held onto the elegant paper shopping bag and the miniature tea tins that came in it for years, until she moved in with Rowan.

As Maree spoke, she couldn’t bear to meet Susie’s gaze again. The sincerity on Susie’s face was almost overwhelming, so she focused her attention on something sitting on Susie’s desk; one of the only things on the surface other than Susie’s laptop, a small cup that had the remnants of Susie’s usual morning espresso, and a lamp with a glassy teal base. The prism was likely just a paperweight, some sort of six-sided glass prism in a shape Maree couldn’t name, but she caught herself wondering briefly if the light was ever just right in the office for it to project rainbows onto the walls.

“And…” Susie chuckled, making Maree look back up at her. “If you want some of my unsolicited advice, don’t worry about timelines with these sorts of things, or when you think you should have done something. I know it’s probably your project manager brain, but your sense of self and feeling comfortable in your own skin not a deliverable.”

She ignored Maree’s incredulous expression and continued on.

“Growing up, and into adulthood, I never wanted to become a wife and mother. I met Toto, fell in love, and got married, but I didn’t really want children, because I couldn’t focus on my racing career and putting myself in danger with someone at home depending on me, and Toto had two children of his own already that were almost teenagers when we started dating. But, once I retired from motorsport, I realized that I wanted to have a family with Toto. I was 35 when I had Jack, and most women my age that I knew already had kids in primary school. But, the good thing is, you have an opportunity for some self-discovery, you know? Change is good, even if it’s not always comfortable, but it will give you what you need to grow. “

It was with Susie’s advice in mind that Maree found herself at a lesbian bar in Soho, appropriately named “She”, a few days later, at the suggestion of her friend Evelyn. Evelyn, or Evie, as Maree called her, was her friend that she had been jealous of when she started dating a woman, desiring the effortless affection that Evie and her wife showed each other.

Maree reasoned that being conservative with taking risks and insisting on sticking to the familiar was what had gotten her into a job and marriage that made her miserable, so there was no reason not to go all in. So she called Evie and asked if she knew of any gay bars frequented by women, and after dealing with Evie’s excited line of questioning over the phone, Maree found herself waiting to meet Evie and Ada, her wife, at the start of the bar’s weekly Wednesday karaoke night.

The bar was not large, but it was loud, likely owing to the fact that it was built out of what looked like the remnants of an old RAF Nissen hut, given the ceiling and walls were made of a single piece of cylindrical corrugated metal.

Maree sat at one of the uncomfortable metal yellow cafe tables that were arranged around the place, nervously glancing between her phone, the door to the bar, and the girl on the small stage singing above an instrumental track of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl'' to an audience that didn’t look particularly interested. She was desperately wondering where Evie and Ada were, and nothing remained of her Moscow Mule other than some half-melted ice pooled at the bottom of its copper mug, a damp napkin, and the spent peel of the lime garnish.

“Come on, Evie…” she murmured to herself, staring at the WhatsApp message window on her phone, desperately waiting for the checkmark in the corner of her last message to turn blue.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” Maree heard someone say. She whipped her head around to see a petite woman sidle up to her table and sit down in the other chair. “You new in town? Just visiting?” They practically had to yell over the noise of the small crowd and the karaoke music.

The woman was very smartly dressed, wearing a pinstripe business suit, but the fact that the shirt - well, more like a bralette - she was wearing underneath was made of black lace and left her midriff exposed made Maree think she definitely had not come straight from work like Maree had.

“Uh… n-no, I live here… well, not in Soho, but, you know… London.”

The woman smiled. “So you’re just new to this bar, then? Good to know. What’s your name, gorgeous?”

“M-Maree.”

“That’s a pretty name. I’m Tara. Can I buy you another drink - Moscow Mule, looks like?”

Tara barely waited for her to nod before getting up and walking toward the bar. Maree thought that having a man come on so strongly would be an unnerving experience that would have probably had her sprinting for the exit door, but something about this - the novelty of it, maybe, had Maree wanting to stay and see what might happen.

It didn’t take more than a minute before Tara returned. She sat down and moved her chair a bit closer to Maree’s, putting a copper mug down with a new drink for Maree. Maree glanced at Tara’s drink - she couldn’t tell what it was, but it was in a rocks glass, garnished with a cherry and a slice of lemon.

“So, Maree, what brings you here? I’m guessing it’s your first time?”

Maree nodded, setting down the copper mug after taking a generous sip.

“Yes. A friend of mine from uni and her wife were supposed to meet me but, I don’t think they’re coming.”

“That’s a shame,” Tara said, with a bit of a smirk. She shot a very intense gaze directly into Maree’s eyes, a look that made her feel a blush starting at her chest and rising to her cheeks. “Hopefully you find my company acceptable.”

Tara was gorgeous, Maree thought. She was trying to remain circumspect and examine whether or not it was honest-to-god attraction, but being one and a half Moscow Mules in already was making it a bit of a task. She was petite, with a delicate frame. Her eyes were a shade of green that likely looked more intense and vibrant than usual, thanks to the flawless eyeliner and eyeshadow she was wearing. She had a delicate nose with a shiny stud piercing, and was wearing silver stud earrings that seemed to match it. She had a choppy blonde haircut that grazed the bottom of her chin. Her hair had dark roots that indicated that her hair color likely wasn’t natural, but it still reminded her of someone. She’d just finished her second Mule, but still had the wherewithal to not allow herself to complete that thought.

Maree loosened up as the two of them talked, doing their best to talk over the goings-on of their surroundings. She found out that Tara was some sort of musician, not enough of a following to be particularly well-known yet, but, according to her, “big enough to pay her bills after one of her songs got some traction on TikTok”. She had the sort of crisp, polished public school accent that made Maree think that she likely didn’t have many of her own bills to worry about in the first place, but she shoved that thought away. It wasn’t as if she often used her real accent, after all.

Maree preferred to keep details of her life spare, only telling Tara that she was in programme management for a sports management company, and not which particular sports management company. Tara did not press for details, even when she returned with another round of drinks.

By the end of Maree’s third Mule, Tara… Maree thought that was her name, at least, as it was getting hard to remember - had gotten quite touchy, stroking the exposed skin on Maree’s arms and shoulders occasionally, and Maree couldn’t find it in herself to mind the attention one bit. At one point, Tara had reached out to tuck a lock of Maree’s dark hair behind her ear, and Maree couldn’t help but involuntarily giggle, before wondering the last time she’d made a noise even remotely similar. She felt a pleasant full-body tingle, her limbs becoming increasingly fluid and pliable, her nerves and apprehension at the beginning of the night a distant memory She wasn’t drunk, not quite, but pleasantly buzzed enough to know that she likely would’ve found this situation horribly embarrassing if she were still sober.

The fatal blow to Maree’s will to resist… what was her name again? Clara, maybe? Clara’s charms, though, came when the woman delicately grasped one of Maree’s hands, holding it gently in place for a moment. The fourth Moscow Mule, along with the shot of Fireball they’d done, certainly wasn’t hurting either.

“You have nice hands, you know.”

For reasons she wasn’t aware of, Maree felt her entire body blush, while trying to think of something to say in response.

“I, uh… thank you? I think?”

She didn’t think there was anything exceptional about them. She preferred to keep her nails short; a holdover from taking piano lessons, and thought that most colors of lacquer would just make her fingers look short and stubby. She preferred neutral or nude shades when she wore nail polish. Her nails were currently a light, almost-invisible pink.

Clara laughed, but didn’t deign to explain further before abruptly changing the subject.

“Come on,” she said, standing up, practically dragging Maree with her. “There’s an open spot on the roster, let’s go do a song.”

Maree did not object, even as they scrolled through the selection on the console. She let Sara pick the song, one that Maree remembered getting heavy radio play not long after she’d graduated from uni. It was one of those top 40 radio pop-driven dance tunes that Maree couldn’t think of the name of or which artist made it, but she somehow knew all of the words to.

“I crashed my car into the bridge, I watched, I let it burn, I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs, I crashed my car into the bridge”, they yelled in unison into the singular karaoke microphone that… uh, was it Clara, or Sara? It was definitely Sara, Maree thought, was holding. Thankfully, the crowd was a bit more lively than when earlier on in the night, and were yelling along and dancing along with the bass-boosted karaoke instrumental track booming over the club’s speakers. It did a lot to make Maree feel

“I don’t care! I love it!”

The intensity seemed to ramp up as the song went on, and by the time the song was over, Sara… or was it like, Sierra? was practically in Maree’s arms, not an inch between them as she clung to her shoulders. The expression on her face was one of delight, her eyes were huge, sweat forming on her forehead. Maree could feel it too, her breath coming in sudden sharp pants, her heartbeat thundering against her ribcage.

“Let’s go take a little break,” Mara said, her breathing just as quick. Somehow, Maree knew exactly what she meant.

They stumbled into the ladies’ room, which was thankfully empty, giggling as they practically dove into an open stall. Maree could barely throw the bolt on the door before Mara… or maybe it was something like Teri? Maree was really having a hard time remembering, but she didn’t think it really mattered at this point, focusing more on the feeling of whoever-she-was pressing her against the stall door, grasping at her hips to hold her in place.

“Wait,” Maree said, pushing Clara’s shoulders back a bit, putting the slightest bit of distance between their mouths. “I have to tell you something… I’ve never done this before.”

“Done what?” Teri said, still panting.

“I’ve never kissed a girl before,” Maree said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I’m still not sure… well, you know, if I like it.”

Sierra laughed a little, but it sounded light and friendly, not the sort of teasing, cruel laugh that Maree was half-expecting.

“That’s okay,” she said, whispering too. “Just follow my lead.”

Sara brought her hands - which were wonderfully warm and soft, Maree thought - to the sides of Maree’s face. She’d adjusted her pace from something fevered and frenzied to something gentler, probing Maree’s mouth with her tongue as her thumbs stroked gently against her cheeks. Maree caught the taste of whiskey sour, she thought, as she closed her eyes and let her lips slide open, just like she did in her dream, when Susie…

Remembering her dreams about Susie made her eyes snap open, catching sight of the blonde of Sara’s hair. She was unable to resist combing her fingers through it, trying to imagine that it was Susie’s. Maree felt a pang of momentary guilt, but between the bass thumping against the walls of the bathroom stall and their shared frantic breathing, she let it go and closed her eyes and allowed herself the fantasy that it was Susie kissing her. She wasn’t exactly in a position to tell herself not to.

The adrenaline fizzed and sparked deliciously under Maree’s skin as she imagined that it was who was kissing her so passionately. Each of them let hands each start to wander, and she grasped at Maree’s ass as Maree let her thumbs travel over the exposed skin on Tara’s abdomen, inching ever upward to the lacy bralette she was wearing.

“You’re doing so well for your first time,” Mara whispered, pulling her lips away from Maree’s for a moment. Imagination was a powerful thing, and it caused Maree to keen as she could’ve sworn that what’s-her-name even started sounding like Susie, her voice having taken on the same warm, almost-maternal affect that Susie used with her. “I wouldn’t have ever guessed if you hadn't told me. I imagine that answers your question.”

Maree giggled. “I guess it does.”

After a few minutes, Maree started feeling more adventurous, moving away from Teri’s mouth and kissing along the delicate skin of her neck, and let her thumbs venture under the hem of her bralette. Maree grazed the underside of Mara’s breasts with her thumb, and she giggled, rewarding Maree by shoving her thigh between the junction of Maree’s legs. Maree canted her hips a little, grinding lightly into her knee as her excitement started reaching a delirious fever pitch. She was wondering how far they would go until the exterior door to the ladies’ room burst open, and a group of what sounded like four other women, all of them drunk and enormously loud, spilled in. Both Maree and… shit, who is she again? jumped, startled, and stumbled out of the stall together to a round of boisterous, supportive peanut-gallery commentary - it was incredibly obvious what they were doing in there, and according to the blonde girl, they weren’t the first ones to do so, nor would they be the last.

As the girl with the name Maree couldn’t remember settled her bar tab, Maree perched on the barstool next to her, and felt like she was in a different world. She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the adolescent thrill of making it to second base with someone even at her age, but everything seemed softer and warmer, the colors of the tinted spotlights and the pulse of the music all blending into one mass of pleasant sensation. She barely paid attention as the blonde woman slipped her the bar receipt with her phone number and her Instagram handle on it.

They sat at the bar and talked for a few minutes as Maree knocked back a water or two and bid farewell to the blonde woman, telling her that she had to be up for work the next morning. They kissed in the stairwell of the bar as Maree left, whispering a promise to message her later on.

By the time she had regained her senses enough to walk down to the Lebanese joint down the street for some a shawarma and some chips to chase the Moscow Mules with and ordered a Bolt back home, the bar receipt was crumpled and forgotten about at the bottom of her purse with the receipt for the falafel shop and the other detritus that tended to gather there.

Maree woke up early the next morning - well before she had to get ready for work, thankfully - feeling nauseous and greasy, and like her head was stuffed with cotton balls but somehow weighed twenty kilos by itself. She had managed to remove her pants before falling into bed, but not her bra or her blouse, both of which had left angry red indents in her skin. Her mouth tasted like the sour remnants of the garlic sauce that was on her shawarma, and she had a message from Evie explaining that she had fallen asleep and that Ada didn’t want to wake her, and that she was sorry and that she had hoped Maree had a good time regardless.

She popped a paracetamol and downed a glass of water before getting in the shower. As she stood under the hot spray, hoping that it would be enough to revive her before she had to leave for work, she tried to piece together the previous night. She remembered getting to the bar and waiting on Evie and Ada to show up, and she remembered that song she did karaoke to, but most of the details were like dust to the wind. All that she could recall with clarity and certainty was the girl with the blonde hair pressing her against the bathroom stall, the way her hands felt as they cradled her face, and the way her lips felt against hers, and the way she closed her eyes and let herself believe that it as Susie kissing her.

It was really too bad she couldn’t remember the girl’s name.

#susie wolff x oc #f1 fic #my fanfic #my fanfic writing #formula 1 fanfic #f1 x oc #formula 1 x oc #formula 1 academy #series: thistle and weeds

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